Friday, December 29, 2006

The Supreme Court Has Ruled That You're Allowed to Ingest Any Drug, Especially If You're an Addict

In the early 1920s, Dr. Linder was convicted of selling one morphine tablet and three cocainetablets to a patient who was addicted to narcotics. The Supreme Court overturned thecon-viction, declaring that providing an addicted patient with a fairly small amount of drugs is anacceptable medical practice "when designed temporarily to alleviate an addict's pains." (Linder v.United States.)In 1962, the Court heard the case of a man who had been sent to the clink under a Californiastate law that made being an addict a criminal offense. Once again, the verdict was tossed out,with the Supremes saying that punishing an addict for being an addict is cruel and unusual and,thus, unconstitutional. (Robinson v. California.)

Six years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in Powell v. Texas. A man whowas arrested for being drunk in public said that, because he was an alcoholic, he couldn't help it.He invoked the Robinson decision as precedent. The Court upheld his conviction because It hadbeen based on an action (being wasted in public), not on the general condition of his addiction tobooze. Justice White supported this decision, yet for different reasons than the others. In hisconcurring opinion, he expanded Robinson:If it cannot be a crime to have an irresistible compulsion to use narcotics,... I do not see howit can constitutionally be a crime to yield to such a compulsion. Punishing an addict forusing drugs convicts for addiction under a different name. Distinguishing between the twocrimes is like forbidding criminal conviction for being sick with flu or epilepsy, butpermitting punishment for running a fever or having a convulsion. Unless Robinson is to beabandoned, the use of narcotics by an addict must be beyond the reach of the criminal law.Similarly, the chronic alcoholic with an irresistible urge to consume alcohol should not bepunishable for drinking or for being drunk.Commenting on these cases, Superior Court Judge James R Gray, an outspoken critic of drugprohibition, has recently written:What difference is there between alcohol and any other dangerous and sometimes addictivedrug? The primary difference is that one is legal while the others are not. And the USSupreme Court has said as much on at least two occasions, finding both in 1925 and 1962that to punish a person for the disease of drug addiction violated the Constitution'sprohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. If that is true, why do we continue toprosecute addicted people for taking these drugs, when it would be unconstitutional toprosecute them for their addiction?Judge Gray gets right to the heart of the matter: "In effect, this 'forgotten precedent' says that >ni!can only be constitutionally punishable for one's conduct, such as assaults, burglary, and drivingunder the influence, and not simply for what one puts into one's own body."If only the Supreme Court and the rest of the justice/law-enforcement complex would applythese decisions, we'd be living in a saner society.